I'm sure we can all feel it; my family, I mean. This feeling of despair has slowly crept up into us like some sort of contemptuous vine. Now, a dark cloud hangs over each of us, carrying with it the same fear: that our best times are behind us and those feelings of happiness that we once had are gone forever. We keep looking outward for some sort of salvation. I don't think any of us feels it might be possible to will it to come from within. Perhaps time, or God's Grace, will change that...

The existential crisis I began having back in college never really went away. It just got pushed out of focus as I dedicated myself to my schoolwork and preparing for my career. I still hope that I will someday figure out how to bring meaning into my life; but for now a dark cloud, and despair, hinder that possibility.

I know I may sound horribly depressed considering the tone of this post, but the truth is I have been faced with several circumstances over the past year that I'm still not sure how to cope with. I usually rely on the support of my friends and family in times like these, however, they are all so far away right now and each dealing with their own set of problems.

Umm... no. It isn't. This is Orlando.

Sent from my iPhone

Justine Ascanio

Once upon a time there was a girl named Stubby. She loved her husband Rossy-Poo VERY much. However, there came a time when he moved across the land and fell in love with Prince Poo Poo Head (sorry, Justin) and stopped loving Stubby. Stubby got very sad and missed Rossy-Poo very much. One day Stubby tried to call Rossy-Poo, but he did not answer his phone, nor did he return her voicemail so Stubby got upset and cried in her room for days and days.

This story doesn't have to end there.. you have the power to fix it.

I called her back the instant I read this :-p

I have a conflict of interest involving my facebook page. It's there to represent me and keep my friends updated about my life. At the same time, my friends aren't the only ones using facebook these days and now my relatives are sending my friend requests and communicating with me on there. The problem is that I'm not out to my extended family and I can think of a few individuals in it that I would like to keep unaware of my sexual orientation. In order to keep things peaceful and civil and relatively drama-free I've had to start deleting posts from my page left by my friends that make any references to my being gay. I feel bad about it, and about loosing record of their communication with me, so I've decided to start re-posting things I delete from facebook here on my blog. Hopefully no one in my family is nosey enough to find this page and bother reading it.

I entered this iPhone 3G S giveaway contest on Quickpwn.com.  You should check it out, only not really because I want to win :-p

http://bit.ly/iphone-3g-s

I've been worrying that my last post made me sound like I was in a really bad place, but when I went back to read it just know, I realized that it doesn't sound nearly as depressing as the way I remembered it. That's good, I was actually pretty down when I wrote it, but I'm feeling a bit better about things now. The things I said are all still true, but I'm a little better adjusted then to just not be able to accept my life for what it is. I can accept it. It's not like I'm really given a choice. I feel sorry for people that aren't able to, for people that do everything they can to escape from reality. Mostly those people are just young though and they will eventually grow out of it as I am apparently still doing myself.

It's getting late. I promise (mostly to myself since no one probably bothers to read my blog anymore) that I will write a normal post within the next week about what has been going on in my life since I moved to Florida.

     For awhile now, during occasional moments of clarity, I've recognized that something in me changed when I wasn't paying attention and I became aware of an absence.  I realized that I felt empty somehow.  The last time I wrote on here it was about the disturbing idea that what I had lost was my soul.  I'm still not entirely sure that that isn't the case, but whatever it is that fell away from me– I think I may have gotten a piece of it back.  I'm also starting to regret it, but I'll get to that later and start from the beginning.

     I started reading the Twilight Saga during my flight home for Thanksgiving break and I almost immediately became absorbed, as I always do with fiction.  I know to avoid picking up a book, because I almost certainly won't be able to put it back down unfinished.  If I'm forced to break away from it for any amount of time my mind continually obsesses over the characters and story-line, playing out possible scenarios and carefully  mulling everything that has taken place so far.  I'm used to my own behavior by now so it didn't surprise me at first when I felt the hooks of the first Twilight book sink into me.  The books in the saga aren't perfect by any means, especially after the first one, but that didn't lessen their appeal any.  It initially bothered me how slowly the first four-fifths of each book progresses, with all of the "action" compressed into the end, but I quickly garnered appreciation for every detail and every action that was meticulously described.  It made me feel more like I was witnessing events rather than being told a story.  Anyways, before I get too far off track the point I wanted to make here is this: two hooks caught particularly deep into parts of me I had all but forgotten since I started college that really made it impossible for me to turn my attention away from the books, and I've been almost constantly obsessing about the fantasy world of the saga ever since.

     The first really caught me off guard.  I've never been a big fan of romantic fiction.  You could probably ask any one of my good friends and they would answer with confidence that it wasn't the sort of thing that appealed to me.  The romance between two of the characters in Twilight, however, hit me unexpectedly.  All I can say is that after reading about it I became painfully aware of a longing I never knew I had.  With some embarrassment I admit that I want an Edward, badly.  In every way that he is in the book (emotionally anyways) that is what I want— not entirely for selfish reasons.  I certainly don't long to be worshiped by someone, praise tends to make me uncomfortable.  It's actually the other way around: I want someone that I feel so strongly about that it hurts to be away from them.  If they feel the same way too, then great; we will both feel so compelled to be in each others' presence that we won't be apart to ever feel that pain.  Now before you feel the urge to caution me about being eager to give my heart away, I don't give it away.  No matter how much I want to I don't.  I might not even be capable of that.  Somehow it's become entirely too guarded.  Despite how truly great some of the guys that I have dated are, I have never been able to develop those sort of feelings or to even care to have them around much.  I do genuinely care about them, but it's doesn't really go beyond that.  I suppose thats why I want an Edward so much.  He's that guy that is just so incredible you have no choice but to surrender your heart.  The saying "I've been waiting my whole life for you" comes to mind, and you just can't believe that he wants you too, that you deserve it.

     The second hook is one I'm more familiar with; one that I've struggled with for a good portion of my life.  I don't know how many of you know this, I'm rather embarrassed to be admitting it now but I absolutely loathe the world.  Not people, but the world, or more appropriately, I guess, existence.  I hate it for being so utterly uninteresting to me.  I get absorbed into fantasy and fiction because it offers an appeal that the real world lacks.  It's a double-edged sword, though, because it gives me a frame of reference to compare reality to that probably makes me even more aggravated for it not living up to my hopes.  Either way, there's really nothing that I truly look forward to in any of the possibilities for my life.  Often times is almost more than I can bear.  I might prefer to fall into a coma and dream endlessly until the day that I die rather than just be another head in the crowd.  I know there are ways to make yourself stand out, but again none of them really appeal to me as providing the sense of fulfillment that I seek.

     I often daydream about what I would wish for if I had the opportunity to have one granted.  I used to have a pretty solid idea of what that would be: it would somehow relate to making my life more interesting in the way I've always wanted.  Somewhere around when I "lost my soul" (I use this phrase lightheartedly), though, my wish started changing minute to minute.  Usually it was something shallow like wishing for an unattainable (physical) lust to come to fruition (e.g. Brad Pitt :-p) and often it would be something more noble but still material like suddenly finding myself with the means to relieve my parents of their mortgage and other debts.  Lately that wish has been rather constant again; this time it would be for my equivalent of an Edward.  It's silly and selfish, but I hate feeling that hole there and I can't imagine missing out on a perfect opportunity to fill it, even if it is just in a stupid daydream.  It occurred to me when I was constructing the semantics of the wish— because that's something I always do, I've read too many stories where wishes were twisted and fulfilled in wretched and sadistic ways— that I would have to specify what qualified as an Edward to me.  A soulmate?  Yes he was that in the book.  Nearly flawless?  Yeah that would make things easier.  But what about his being a vampire?  Would that be integral?  That is certainly full of negative connotations.  It really could be a horrifying notion.  I had to think about this a little bit.  Ultimately I concluded that, yes, this aspect would also necessary.  It is the fact the timeframe is eternity, that with infinite time and patience he still couldn't possibly have any other true love, just the one, that makes it so completely desirable and fulfilling.  Of course the whole superhuman abilities part of it doesn't hurt either.  That solves the part about existence being uninteresting and not standing out.

Well, daydreams are just that: dreams.  All I can hope for is to meet a great guy and fall in love with him, which I do look forward to, and also to get through school, build a career, and establish some sort of a life for myself, which I'm only marginally interested in.  I did regain a part of myself that was temporarily lost.  I had been stumbling through life with such apathy that I almost forgot what it was like to have an inner monologue and now my mind is constantly chattering away to itself in introspection and analysis.  I've remembered how to use my imagination again too, but at the same time I'm not numb and unaware of my discontent anymore.  I'm also losing my resolve.

From your Michellypooh

I decided that I hadn't checked with your blog lately and I ought to take a look, and your last post really upset me. You are an incredibly significant person, the problem is that you have trouble relating to other people. The reason that you can I always got along so well was that we both saw in each other someone who was just as socially incapable and had similar interests. I can honestly say that I have more fun hanging out with you than anyone else. Just today I thought that you must be coming back to Dallas soon, said you said like 3 weeks and that was a while ago.
If people view you as being how you described, it's because they haven't bothered to take the time to really get to know you. They see you and evaluate you in a matter of minutes, then place you into some category in their mind. There is so much to you, and everyone has to find themselves. There was a point in my life, after I had really just been broken, that I had to stop and look at where I was. I thought about who I wanted to be and where I wanted to be, and just started working my way up. I've changed so much each year it seems, and I think that that's how life is meant to be. We have our core personality traits but who we are changes as our life changes.
All the things we experience and see add to what we understand, so there's nothing wrong with being confused. I always ask people at work "What is it that you do?" They're usually confused at first but I explain "When you're at work, you're not really thinking about how much you want to be here. So when you're emptying the trash, what is it that you think about that you'd rather be doing?" Everyone has something that they look forward to, something that makes them happy. That's just what you have to find, and it doesn't matter if it's unconventional or if other people don't understand and criticize you.
If you're not happy where you are, then you need to think about what you can do to change that. If things are hard, you just keep telling yourself that it has to get better, and tomorrow is a new chance.